Abstract:We examine the self-reported moral attitudes and moral behavior of 198
ethics professors, 208 non-ethicist philosophers, and 167 professors in
departments other than philosophy on eight moral issues: academic society
membership, voting, staying in touch with one's mother, vegetarianism, organ and
blood donation, responsiveness to student emails, charitable giving, and honesty
in responding to survey questionnaires. On some issues we also had direct
behavioral measures that we could compare with self-report. Ethicists expressed
somewhat more stringent normative attitudes on some issues, such as
vegetarianism and charitable donation. However, on no issue did ethicists show
significantly better behavior than the two comparison groups. Our findings on
attitude-behavior consistency were mixed: Ethicists showed the strongest
relationship between behavior and expressed moral attitude regarding voting but
the weakest regarding charitable donation.

IRB approval: U.C. Riverside HRRB HS-09-002

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